


All Of Our Wealth

by the_ragnarok



Series: Happy Endings [14]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Crossdressing, F/M, M/M, Secret Marriage, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dom gets a clue, Arthur gets a ring and Eames gets to be smug forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Of Our Wealth

There are a number of people from whom Dom would expect a flat-out refusal to work this job. First among which is himself, considering that he vowed not to work in dream-sharing ever, ever again. But Saito called, and when Saito says jump, you'll find he's already mailed you the instructions re: height.

He could definitely see Arthur vetoing – well, not this job, which is relatively safe and pays well – but he's seen that face Arthur makes, like his teeth hurt even thinking about a specific job, right before he bites out, "Uh, _no_."

Ariadne has her schoolwork and Yusuf has his lab, but when he's gathered the old team and he goes through the info, it's Eames who says, "Forgive me, but I don't think I am best suited for this."

Dom aims a pointed look at Arthur – _you brought him, you deal with him_ – and Arthur raises and eyebrow. "You don't think you can do this?"

Eames rolls his eyes. "Of course I can do this, don't be absurd." His voice has that edge that it only gets talking to Arthur. "It's just that I _won't_. Shall I illustrate the difference?"

"I'm familiar with it, thank you." Arthur leans forward in his chair, spearing Eames with a glare. "Why don't you explain why you _won't_ , then."

Eames gestures. "Just not right, is it? Pretending to be some poor man's sweetheart just so we can plant an idea in his head."

Pretty much everyone in the room stare at Eames in disbelief.

"Instances when you've done exactly that: Cooper," Arthur counts on his fingers, "Sheridan, Na'imi, Brazilov. And that's in the last _six months_ , Eames."

"Yes, but I was forging their actual wives," Eames says. "Re-enacting a memory isn't the same as a complete fabrication."

There's a short silence in which Eames and Arthur lock eyes. Then Arthur drops his gaze. "All right. Then let's think of another way to do this."

"In case you haven't noticed," Yusuf says, "we've been spending the last three hours trying to find of another way to do it. Shit or get off the godforsaken pot, Eames. Some of us have better things to do."

Eames grinds his jaw. He and Arthur resume their staring contest.

"I won't," Eames says again, quiet, "pretend to get married to some person. I'm very sorry, but I won't. You can look for another forger if you wish."

That's pretty hopeless, since Dom can't do this without Arthur and Arthur won't work with other forgers. True, whenever Dom used to mention working with Eames Arthur would sulk about it for days, but when it came to it other forgers just never compared. That must be why Arthur and Eames still worked together, despite the fact that to Dom's knowledge they were incapable of being in the same place for over an hour without fighting.

"All right," Arthur says, and while Dom's taking in air to start with the serious yelling, Arthur says, "I'll do it."

Into the stunned silence, Ariadne ventures, "You can forge?"

"No. But," Arthur fishes a photograph out of the neat research file he's holding, "look at her."

Dom does. She's definitely not hard on the eyes, Dormer's childhood crush, sweet brown eyes and a pretty little mouth, hair falling around her face in artsy curls.

Then he blinks, and looks at Arthur. "What am I supposed to see?"

Ariadne purses her mouth and says, "No, he's got a point. It'll take some makeup and you couldn't fake her voice, but you could look just like her."

Eames is frowning, but he's not actively disagreeing.

Arthur gives him a long look. "Okay?" he says. "Or are you going to give me crap for taking over your professional capacity?"

Eames sighs. "I'm not filling it. I suppose you might as well."

"Where are you going?" Dom says when Eames gets up.

"Well, there's no need for me here, is there?"

"Of course there is," Dom says in concert with Arthur's "Don't be an idiot." After shooting a quelling look at Arthur, Dom continues. "Unless there's anyone else here who can make an honest woman of Arthur?"

Arthur chokes on his coffee.

~~

Dom was kidding, for the most part. They need Eames for his insight, for his ability to compress an idea into something that would catch and not let go. It occurred to Dom more than once, actually, that if Eames ever wanted to go legit he could make a terrifyingly good copywriter.

But as it turns out, Eames really does have experience with – not drag, apparently that means something else (Dom was corrected about this by Ariadne, at length) – but with all the little tricks of makeup and clothing that could camouflage just about anything about a person.

So that's useful, that's one concern Dom can put aside so he can worry full-time about the fact that Eames is becoming a basket case.

Now, Dom isn't entirely oblivious. He fully recognizes himself as the pot to Eames' kettle in this scenario. Dom does think that he has more extenuating circumstances than most people, even in their line of work, but still. Probably his children deserve a steadier father than the one they have.

This doesn't change the fact that Eames is being _strange_ , and if Dom can tell, Eames is probably in the last stages of some malignant brain disease.

Case in point: Yusuf shows Ariadne a picture of something on his telephone. Ariadne exclaims, "It's so big!"

From Eames, radio silence. Not even a half-hearted "That's what she said."

(Much to Dom's relief, it turned out Yusuf was showing Ariadne a picture of one of his cats, which was really more like a small tiger. But it's not like Eames ever let anything like that stop him.)

In and of itself, that wasn't much an indication of anything. Everyone had their off days, and while Dom was always excellent at getting what he wanted from people, he was never very good at just _getting_ them. On the other hand, Dom knew Arthur, and he could tell Arthur was worried.

Arthur didn't say anything, of course, because Arthur never said anything. But those little things, the way Arthur hesitates before talking to Eames, Arthur turning on the heating when Eames sits hunched in his chair. How he takes particular care to leave the results of the research he's doing for Eames in order, color-coded and neatly printed, as if that even mattered. Dom knows these things, because Arthur used to do that for _him_.

Eames isn't self-destructing, he isn't grieving, but Dom knows Arthur and Arthur doesn't do nice. What Arthur does is resource management. Arthur doles out kindness in precise measurements, just enough to keep his teammates working. If Eames is getting special treatment, things are worse than they seem.

~~

Mr. Avros, their client, is a friend of Saito. Dom repeats this to himself, because if he doesn't he may lose concentration and take a swing at the bastard.

"So I thought we," Avros says, as if there was a _we_ here, "could give him some nightmare landscape. Make him wish he'd never taken this job."

The job is to convince Avros' rival, John Dormer, to give up his bid for the management of CloseTech, inc., presumably leaving Avros to pick up the spoils. Dom sort of feels sorry for CloseTech employees.

"We're going with a positive scenario," Dom explains for what feels like the hundredth time. "Those are more likely to stick. We'll enact a fantasy of him getting married to his childhood sweetheart, thus making him realize that he lives in a cold corporate world when he could have a loving family." It sounded better when Eames said it. It's a shame Eames can't take Dom's place here, mostly because that would mean Dom would be elsewhere.

But Eames is fragile, so it's Dom who gets stuck with Dante's version of the Pointy Haired Boss.

The meeting drags on until nearly midnight. Dom is practically staggering by the time he gets back to the house they've rented to serve as headquarters, a little from fatigue, mostly from the sheer amount of alcohol needed to keep him calm in the face of sheer assholery.

Dom is good with people normally, really he is. But there is a specific type of jerk that Dom can't deal with, and that's the amateur who thinks he knows something about extraction. The kind of person who looks at dream-sharing and never sees anything more than a complicated piece of equipment.

You could read all you wanted and never understand dream-sharing. It did things to you. The people you worked with were tools of the profession, as much as the PASIV device if not more so. PASIV devices got broken and fixed every day. A dreamer, one who was good at his craft, was much harder to replace.

This is why, when he walks into the living room to find Eames unconscious on the couch with a PASIV whirring gently next to him, Dom doesn't think twice before lying down and going under as well.

He comes to in a hotel room. He rubs his fingers over the bedspread, frowning. The feel, which is generically soft, doesn't match the frayed, rough look of the fabric. But then, Eames isn't an architect.

Dom leaves the room, cautious. He knows where to go to find Eames, but he's not certain that's what he wants to do. To be honest, Dom doesn't entirely know what he's trying to do. Well, he does know – he wants to see what's hiding in here. What Eames is dreaming about, after hours. On a hunch, he takes the elevator to the ground floor and leaves the hotel.

The city outside is bright and unfamiliar to Dom. There's some repetitiveness – the same clump of yellow flowers and wing-shaped leaves keeps brushing Dom's feet, the same battered Subaru keeps driving by. Not many people in the street, and the shops are mostly closed. As a fantasy, the place isn't much.

Across the road from Dom, there's a bank. It's almost too easy. No, scratch that. It _is_ too easy – there's no way Eames isn't militarized.

Dom does cross the street, goes to the corner behind the bank, and there's a post office. This could be a trap just as it could be the genuine article. Dom takes a deep breath and walks inside.

The clerk manning the counter is young and pretty, downright flirtatious when Dom pretends to be a tourist who lost the key to his safe-deposit box. So probably a trap. Dom follows her inside, but he's wary.

He kneels in front of the box she pointed him to, opens it, waits until she leaves and runs two fingers across the side of the empty box. The steel ripples like water under his touch, and parts.

"Sir," says someone, and that's a voice Dom knows. "This isn't your box."

"Sure it is," Dom says with his most placating grin. "328, see?" He holds up the key the clerk gave him.

Then again, Dom's best bullshit never worked on Arthur. It doesn't work on this projection, either, who stares at him with hard, implacable eyes.

"Sir, I'm going to ask you to leave." And because Arthur never makes an empty threat, Dom can hear the click of a gun's safety being removed.

Projections aren't the people they represent. Dom learned this lesson in the most possibly painful way. But this is _Arthur_ , and moreover, this is Eames' representation of Arthur. Dom is pretty sure Arthur won't kill him painfully.

Not just yet, anyway.

"This is very important," he says, injecting his voice with all the urgency he can affect. "It's vital, actually, that I access what's in there."

"Not your box," Arthur repeats, but he sounds the tiniest bit uncertain, and Dom pounces.

"Do you know who you are?" he asks the projection, in a soft controlled voice. Usually reminding the subconscious that it's dreaming is a terrible idea, but Eames isn't a mark, he's a dreamer who went under of his own volition.

"Security," Projection Arthur replies, not a little stiff. "You're not supposed to be here."

Dom barely keeps from grinning. No reason he can't have a little fun, after all. "Excellent!" He gets up, reaches to shake Arthur's hand. "I'm – " Not Mr. Charles, Eames' subconscious will be all over that, "Orlando Kirk, of Kirk and Lackey security surveillance services. And may I say how glad I am to see someone so keen on their job?"

"I need to see identification." Projection Arthur's face is carefully blank. He knows Dom is talking out of his ass, because he has a bit of Arthur in him and therefore knows exactly what Dom is doing here.

Then again, that self-same piece of Arthur doesn't allow him to ignore the papers that materialize in Dom's pocket when he reaches for them. "There you go."

Projection Arthur's brow furrows. "I'm going to need to check these. Could you please come with me to the office?"

"Of course," Dom says. He takes three steps behind Projection Arthur before an alarm goes off somewhere.

Projection Arthur mumbles, "Shit," and starts running. Dom stands in place for a moment, blinking, before running back to the box. The rip in the wall is still open, and Dom reaches inside without much difficulty.

There's something small and rectangular inside. _Bingo._ Dom pulls it out to see a jewelery box, pearl-gray and tied with a dark red ribbon. Dom pulls it open, but the more he pulls the more ribbon there is, and the box will not come open.

Finally he gets the last of it off, prying the lid off. He only gets a glimpse before someone snarls, "Fuck you, Cobb," and he wakes up to Eames' furious expression.

~~

Eames apparently thinks that working late is a viable excuse for the state Dom found him in. More baffling is the fact that Arthur seems to agree. Then again, Arthur's only at the house because he was still up, watching video footage of Dormer's crush. (Dom keeps forgetting her name. He should ask Arthur what it is.)

Dom just wants to say that when _he_ used to say he was working late, nobody bought it. He has no idea why Eames merits better consideration.

And besides, "Did you know he has you for Mr. Charles?" Dom asks Arthur. "You're playing head-of-security in his brain." To Eames, "Care to explain what Arthur's doing in your brain?"

"His bloody job," Eames says, cool as anything. If Arthur's at all disturbed by this, he doesn't show it. "What I want to know, Cobb, is what _you_ were doing in my brain."

"I'm worried about you," Dom says in the calmest fucking voice he can bring himself to use under the circumstances. "You're not yourself. _Arthur's_ worried."

Eames, thankfully, recognizes that for the sign of the apocalypse that it is. His eyebrows rise. "Well, I'll admit I haven't been at my best recently." His eyes narrow. "However, I didn't realize that gave you implicit permission to poke about in my mind."

Arthur's eyes have that hard look to them, but they're aimed at Dom. Dom sighs. Knowing when to cut his losses isn't his strongest suit, but he's working on it. "All right," he says. "I apologize. Eames, I shouldn't have done that." _And I wouldn't have if you had the decency not to go insane._

"I think," Arthur says in a tight voice, "that I might have contributed to this... misunderstanding. I'm sorry as well."

Dom can't make any sense of the look Eames gives Arthur then, so he doesn't bother trying.

~~

It's all for the best, though. Eames snaps back into himself, most visible by the way he's snapping at Arthur, who rolls his eyes and makes sarcastic remarks at him. Dom never thought he'd miss Arthur making fun of Eames' clothes, but apparently there's a first time for everything.

Preparations for the attempted inception proceed apace. Dom still can't get over it, how what used to be a world-shaking possibility turned into a common instrument of petty rivalry. It's almost enough to make him quit the profession in disgust. Except, oh yeah, he tried that, and then a certain Japanese businessman yanked his chain and he came running.

There are days that Dom really despairs of how fucked up his life is. He cheers himself up with the thought that probably Eames' is in a worse state. Eames' life contains madness _and_ paisley.

It's in the middle of one of these sulks that Dom decides that to hell with it, he wants to know what's going on. Poking around in Eames' things is probably a little low, but Dom justifies it to himself as a necessary security measure, even as he knows he's bullshitting himself.

Dom could say how this was about Eames' capability to do his job. It isn't really about Eames at all. It's about all the pieces Dom has that he can't fit anywhere. About Arthur in Eames' mind, Arthur's strange fits of concern and his frequent dis- and re-appearances, the way his team sometimes has of looking at each other as if there's some shared secret Dom and Dom alone wasn't told.

When it comes to it, he didn't exactly become an extractor out of an overwhelming sense of respect for other people's privacy.

The contents of Eames' suitcase aren't particularly interesting. Clothes, shower bag, a couple of books (Eames, apparently, is a Susanna Clarke fan), something small made of leather straps held together with snaps that Dom doesn't touch.

And in the very corner, folded up neatly on itself, a small rectangular object wrapped in a plastic bag.

The bag is old enough to be almost brittle, crinkling alarmingly when Dom touches it. He knows how to be careful, though, and he opens it. Inside there's a box, swathed in muted silver wrapping paper.

There's a receipt. It's not in any language Dom knows and the print is half-faded besides, but least the date is still legible. Though if that's to be believed, the box was lying here unwrapped for six years.

Dom is careful to put everything back the way he found it.

~~

After the unholy mess that was the Fischer job, it's a huge relief when the first level goes butter-smooth. Dormer's mind doesn't even know what hit him.

The level is a small town – not the one the mark grew up in, but not too different. Yusuf is the dreamer, and Dom feels his influence in the heavy, moist air, the almost washed-out look of buildings in the distance compared with the vividness of smells in the air, decaying vegetation and fresh bread so strong Dom can almost taste it.

Dom accosts Dormer. "John!" he says, warmly. "John, man, it's been years! What are you doing here?"

Dormer looks him over. Dom's wearing a windbreaker over a plaid flannel shirt, something almost painfully everyday compared to Dormer's suit. "Yeah," Dormer says, with the careful expression of someone too embarrassed to say _Do I know you?_ "Years."

Dom claps a hand on his shoulder. "You should come to my place," he says. "Meet the wifey." Remind the mark of the simple, folksy family life that he gave up, that's the idea.

Arthur, in the role of Dormer's assistant, appears out of nowhere to frown and say, "We're already running late."

"Sorry," Dormer to Dom, obviously grateful to be spared further interaction with someone he doesn't even remember. Dom is just as grateful. Mal is a quiet ghost now, but there's no telling what Dom's subconscious will do to the concept of _home with my wife_ these days.

"Well, come by sometimes." Dom hands Dormer a card, and Dormer pockets it without looking at it.

The card, rather than containing the contact information for the character Dom's playing (Albert Crichton, an actual childhood friend of Dormer with a passing resemblance to Dom), contains the name and address of a psychic specializing in past life regression. The psychic, of course, is played by Eames. Who took enough delight in the role that he stopped launching paper airplanes at Arthur, for which Arthur and Dom's remaining sanity thanked him.

That's done. Nothing more to do, now, but wait for Dormer's superstitions get the better of him.

"Do you think it'll work?" Yusuf asks Dom when he goes back to the little house he made for them to wait in.

"'Course it will," Eames says, applying makeup. "I'm a brilliant psychic. Made a killing in Chicago before those bastards put a hit on me."

Yusuf apparently already knows that story and Dom would rather stay in ignorance, but Ariadne says, "You look pretty alive to me."

Eames bats his false eyelashes at her. "Thank you, Ariadne. You look very pretty, too."

Dom sighs. "Eames, why are you putting on makeup?"

For a minute, just after he opens his mouth, Dom finds himself deeply regretting asking anything. It's not that Eames reacts negatively, it's just that Dom can't imagine an answer to that question that he wants to hear.

"Got to be all pretty for my date with Dormer, don't I?" Eames dabs at his lipstick. "Besides, I need the practice if I'm going to do Arthur later."

Ariadne snickers, because Eames hasn't been reacting to that kind of thing lately and nature abhors a vacuum. Eames ignores her, rather than making some kind of joke about it, and that's... worrying.

To take his mind off it, Dom asks, "You're going to do his makeup?"

"Unless you're volunteering to do it yourself." Eames spins in his chair, facing them. He's wearing a dress with an awful floral print, pink and green over black, several sizes too big for _anyone_. His makeup is overstated, foundation sinking unflatteringly into small wrinkles in his skin. "Speaking of which, has anyone given thought to Arthur's dress?"

That is something Dom is very happy he doesn't hear on a regular basis. "Not really." Dom's understanding of clothes begins and ends in formal menswear, and this only because of necessity.

Eames raises an eyebrow at Ariadne, who glares menacingly back. Yusuf walks a step backwards before Eames' eyes settle on him. "Not me, mate."

"Must I do everything," Eames says, despondent.

"Sorry," Ariadne says. "I like to leave the crossdressing to the experts."

"None of you," Eames says, "are any help. The least you could do is get me some drafting paper."

In the end, Ariadne does end up making helpful comments. This isn't as surprising as the fact Dom finds himself fascinated. Wedding dresses, apparently, can be something on the scale of a minor architectural project – there are load-bearing elements and the careful balance of materials, and it's no less interesting when said materials are lace and satin instead of concrete and glass.

Eames draws in swift, precise lines, shading carefully as he goes. What he's making is surprisingly elaborate, with a hooped skirt and yards-long train, a corset top and some intricate weave with the shoulder straps.

"Hey, I remember that," Ariadne says, looking at the latter. "It's the same as the dress you wore in Fischer's dream, only white."

"Cream," Eames corrects, absent-minded. He gives the faceless person he's drawn an elaborate veil, lace patterned with leaves of varying shapes. "Yeah. I like the design."

"I don't know," Dom says, frowning. "I can't see Arthur wearing that."

"Exactly the point, isn't it?" Eames lines a shadow in the background. "It doesn't look like Arthur. It looks like Cheryl." So that's what Dormer's crush was called. "Confuse the enemy." Eames' voice slides into an approximation of Arthur's for that. He doesn't even seem to notice.

"I think it's lovely," says a voice from the corner, and everyone freezes.

Dom is slow to turn his face. He catches first the hem of her sleeve. Brown cotton, he remembers this shirt, she used to wear it on Sundays when they had nowhere in particular to go. It's easier to take in the details than the whole. Her shoes are red, low heels, with a little crimson bow on the high strap. Her skirt is knee-length and fluttery, cream shading into pink.

"Are you too afraid to look me in the eye?" Mal says softly. "Or perhaps ashamed?"

 _Yes._ Instead Dom says, "You shouldn't be here." His voice is thick with ache, something scarred over but still vulnerable.

She smiles, the lovely tender smile he couldn't even remember properly anymore. But the expression is right, somehow. "You mustn't be so harsh," she says. "Did I not save you from the wrath of Mr. Eames' projections?"

He blinks. The alarm in the post-office. "You set off the alarm?"

"Who else?" She leans closer. "Unless you imagine our darling forger secretly wanted you to know what it is he's hiding."

He could never understand Mal when she was alive. You'd think her being a creature of his subconscious would make things better. "Mal," he says, unable to stop himself any longer from reaching out to touch her.

She shakes her head gently. "Goodbye, Dom." She vanishes, and Dom is left clutching at air.

Distantly, he hears Ariadne ask, "Eames, what is he talking about?"

He can't even make out Eames' reply. Mal. Oh, God, Mal. It might have been better to be shot in the gut again.

~~

Dom is pretty much useless for the next few hours. He manages to leave for the other room when Eames shoos everyone off, but once he's there all he can do is sit with his head in his hands and relive memory after memory, so intense they seemed realer than life, realer than the dreams Mal crafted in her prime.

After a small eternity, he realizes someone is shaking his shoulder. "Hey," Ariadne says, not unkindly. "Snap out of it."

"It could be worse," Yusuf offers, philosophical. "At least nobody died this time."

Dom flinches. Ariadne glares at Yusuf. "That was uncalled for," she says.

"No," Dom says. "No, he's right. This is." His hands drop to his knees, restless. "I thought I had it under control." He'd dreamed little since the Fischer job, mostly in training for this job. Mal never showed up, but then again, Mal always liked to skip the training parts of every mission. They used to argue about that.

"You're drifting again," Ariadne says. This is why Dom never got truly, inexcusably furious with her. It's that tone she has, like everyone is a little fucked up inside and that's okay. Compare that to Arthur's cool judgment, to Eames' slick evasion, to Yusuf's cheerful indifference. It's pretty sad that the person Dom feels safest around nowadays is a twenty-year-old architecture student, but there you have it.

In the other room, Eames is making Dormer a cup of tea so as to read his fortune in the leaves. The tea is drugged, of course. A small bell chimes – that's Eames' signal, that means they need to prepare the PASIV to go down into the second level.

Arthur ducks inside through the back door just as Yusuf is putting Dom under. "Did I miss anything?" Arthur asks.

"Only your wedding dress," Yusuf says, and Arthur's dismayed expression is the last thing Dom sees before going under.

~~

The next level is a single hotel floor, looped up on itself to cage the restless subconscious inside. Dom smooths the lapels of his jacket, which is inexplicably dark blue. This isn't the kind of stuff he wears, normally, but he's come out looking worse in Arthur's dreams. The first time he came under to discover his tie was patterned with small flowers, he and Arthur had Words, and ever since Dom was somberly dressed in Arthur's dreams, professional and respectable.

Eames' shirt, though, is the exact same pattern his dress was in the dream above. Dom winces. Eames catches Dom's eye, looks down, grins and... shifts. The shirt transforms into plain black. Then Eames catches sight of himself in a wall-sized mirror nearby, frowns in concentration, and suddenly he's a middle-aged matron in a stiff turquoise dress.

"I'll just be looking after my darling," Eames says, his accent not unlike Dormer's. Dom gathers Eames is playing the bride's mother.

Ariadne is standing by the elevators, making pleasant conversation with the mark. That's everyone but Arthur accounted for. Dom follows Eames into one of the rooms.

He and Arthur are sitting on chairs facing each other. Eames has a frighteningly large makeup kit out, and he's dabbing bits of makeup on Arthur's neck, frowning and wiping them off again. Arthur is bearing this with considerably more dignity and less squirming than Dom would have expected.

There's nothing much to say, now, so Dom just sits and watches as Eames effectively deletes Arthur's face and paints over the smoothed surface. Eames' concentration is absolute, working over Arthur's face with the same single-minded focus Dom has seen him apply to forging real life works of art.

Arthur stays absolutely still except when Eames asks him to move. There's something vaguely terrifying about it, as though Arthur is being transformed into a wax statue of himself. Dom's almost grateful for Arthur's tapping foot, for its unsubtlety.

Then it's time to put Arthur's dress on, and Dom is beating a hasty retreat when he hears Ariadne's voice carrying over from the corridor. Dom freezes two steps from the door. Dormer and Ariadne are just outside, talking about baseball, of all things.

Which means that Dom is stuck in here until Ariadne gets Dormer to the conference room where the wedding reception is held. Shit.

He resolves to stare at the wall until he hears a chuckle and a feminine voice – right, that's Eames – say, "Much as I appreciate your traditionalism, not looking at the bride won't give us much by way of luck."

"More to the point," and damn, it's odd to hear Arthur's dry voice coming from someone that heavily made-up, "it's going to give you a crick in your neck if you keep your head at that angle."

When Dom looks back Arthur's wearing the skirt, and Eames is helping him into the corset.

If Dom bothered giving this any thought, he would have pointed this as the moment Arthur would start truly getting nervous. That appears to be pretty far off the mark. Arthur's breathing is deep and even, his expression – as much of it as Dom can make under all that crap Eames put on him – is calm. Even his twitchy foot stopped.

Arthur quirks something like a smile at Dom. "You worry too much," he says, sounding for all the world as if he were getting a massage rather than strapped into something that was supposed to be tight enough to rearrange his internal organs.

Eames chooses that moment to pull the laces tighter. Arthur exhales and closes his eyes. "What a pretty bride you'd be," Eames says, probably too caught up in his character to realize what he just said.

Dom has no explanation for Arthur not commenting on it, though. Possibly he's literally saving his breath. That corset looks distressingly tight.

It seems like forever until Ariadne and Dormer move away. Time for Dom to go to the conference room and do his pitch. The vertigo-like anxiety that strikes him is almost comfortably familiar, that rush of _Why am I doing it like this. This is the wrong way. I should have thought this through._

Then Dormer is looking at Dom with a blank expression, and everything runs out of Dom, leaving only the quiet calm before the con. "Buddy!" Dom exclaims. "What are you doing here?"

Dormer blinks slowly. "Getting married," he says, in a tone somewhere between dawning wonder and sinking terror.

Dom gives Dormer his most winning smile. "Man, that's great!" He doesn't punch Dormer in the shoulder like he intended to, though. Dormer doesn't look like he wants to be touched.

"Yeah," Dormer says with a faltering smile. "Great."

Dom resists the urge to look around for angry projections. He has the instincts to know when he's hunted, and he isn't. Just uncomfortable, like the dream is wobbling around him.

Dormer's looking restless, twisting his cufflinks. "Well," he says. "Showtime, I guess."

"Good luck," Dom calls after him.

He doesn't look aside as he walks. He doesn't need to, to feel the quiet presence beside him. Her heels click on the floor. He doesn't dare face her. He can't bear to ignore her.

"What do you want, Mal?" He wishes his voice was anything but this, breakable, a legacy of teenage years he never fully left behind. She stops. He could just go on, walk away.

He turns to face her.

She tilts her head, in the charming way she had. He all but forgot about it. "For everyone to be happy." She takes a step closer, and her eyes are so kind. "What else?" She trails two fingers down the front of his jacket.

Before Dom can think of an answer, she turns away, walking quickly into a wall that opens for her and heals shut when she enters it.

~~

Dormer is twitching. Dom is keeping an eye on him.

Dom's seat is in the fifth line from the front, far enough to blend in with the crowd of murmuring projections. Eames is sitting to his one side, looking like himself again. Ariadne is sitting by the aisle, giving Dormer a huge, encouraging smile.

Looks like Dormer could use all the encouragement he can get. He's checking his watch with a rapidity that's alarming for more than one reason.

Then Cheryl enters the room. Have to give it to Eames; even though Dom saw the entire process, when he looks at the person standing in the doorway, it's not Arthur he sees but someone young and sweet and innocent.

Dormer makes a choked sound, a stunned-happy look in his eye. "Cheryl." Then he's smiling at her, so wide it looks like he can't contain it. She – he, damn it – smiles back, demure. Dom suspects Arthur's trying not to crack the makeup. Arthur-as-Cheryl takes Dormer's offered hand and they walk to the altar in a decorous pace.

"Dearly beloved," the priest begins, and then everything sort of blurs. Fun part of being in dreams, that – never having to endure the boring parts nobody remembers. Except the priest stops in, "...Or forever hold their peace," and Dom's heart is beating in his chest because _that's the wrong place_.

The blur should have held them all the way until _I do_ , the ring exchange, and getting thoroughly drunk at dinner afterwards. This isn't the place to put a dramatic emphasis.

Worse, the priest isn't continuing. Just standing there and blinking at Dormer and Cheryl/Arthur as if he's waiting for an answer. That's some definite hostile feeling Dom is picking up from the projections.

There's a creak besides him. Dom turns his head to see Eames gripping the seat handles so hard his knuckles turn white. Before Dom gets the chance to so much as raise an eyebrow at Eames, Dormer exhales loudly. He takes Arthur's hand in his own.

"This was never going to work, was it?" Dormer sounds a little amazed and very rueful. "It was a nice dream while it lasted, but it was always a terrible idea." He runs a finger down Arthur's cheek. "You're amazing, and I really like you. But I _love_ my job."

For a minute, Dom can _see_ Arthur seriously considering bursting into hysterics.

"You need someone who can make you happy," Dormer earnestly tells Arthur. "Someone who won't ignore you for their job."

There's a muscle twitching in Arthur's jaw, just barely visible below the makeup.

Dormer chuckles. "What am I saying? Of course you will. You always had more sense than me." He turns and walks away, leaving Arthur stranded and blinking.

The priest looks confused. "Well, traditionally, the best man is supposed to marry the bride if she's jilted. But it appears we don't have one."

Eames vaults over the bench in front of them. "I'll do it!" he yells cheerfully.

Arthur glares at him. "You'll _what_?" At the sound of Arthur's undeniably masculine voice, every eye in the audience turns on him. Arthur must have just remembered he's the dreamer, because he swallows and in a small voice says, "Shit."

"I will!" Eames walks to the altar with quick steps. He grabs Arthur's hand, practically dragging him forward.

Next to Dom, Ariadne whispers, "What the fuck is he doing?"

Dom isn't entirely certain himself. Is Eames trying to distract the projections? By the rising murmurs around them, it's doing the exact opposite. Dom reaches into his jacket to grab his gun, and sort of freezes when he feels something unexpected. There's a lump in his jacket pocket, something small and square, and Dom remembers Mal sliding her hand down his front.

Mal always did have quick hands. Dom takes it out of his pocket. He recognizes the brittle plastic bag, the weight of the thing in his hand. A jewelery box, unwrapped now. Dom only has to take the lid off to see two rings lying nestled in thick padding – one a wide gold band, the other narrower and made of something heavy and black that Dom doesn't recognize.

Arthur is standing in front of the altar, sputtering, and Eames takes Arthur's hand and says, "We never got around to having a proper ceremony, did we?"

Dom stares down at the rings. Then he looks up at Arthur and Eames, the latter beaming and the former looking torn between his accustomed murderous rage and blushing. For a long minute, all Dom can think is, _Wait, seriously? I mean, for_ real?

The rings are cold and heavy in his hands. That box in Eames' suitcase, six years old and unopened. What the hell, that's longer than Dom even _knows_ Arthur. Would it hurt the guy to mention _And oh, that jerk I keep fighting with and yet won't work without is my husband. Funny, isn't it?_

Oh, right. It's Arthur. It would probably hurt _somebody._

The floor is shaking, subtle but unmistakable. The projections are mobilizing, the dream is subtly falling to pieces around them, Arthur looks like he's trying to prioritize his killing schedule, and even Eames' mad grin is fading. There's only one thing for Dom to do.

He gets up and walks to the altar. "I believe these are yours," he says, handing Eames the rings.

Eames' crooked smile flairs up again. "Right," he says to the priest. "So if we may – "

"This is highly irregular," the priest says. It's the kind of phrase you expect to hear uttered in a high, agitated voice, but the priest's tone is low and bordering on monotone. A chunk of ceiling hits the floor near Dom's shoe.

Arthur looks like he's itching for a weapon, any weapon. It's a worrying look. Dom has, in fact, seen Arthur tear limbs off projections to use as blunt instruments, although admittedly in more worrisome situations than this one. Dom takes a few steps toward Ariadne when a hush falls over the room.

The projections have more than quieted down. They seem to be sitting in a stiff parody of attention. Even the very structure stopped moving. It doesn't feel stabilized, though.

There's a sound of footsteps coming down the hallway.

At first, all Dom can see is a silhouette shaded against the door. It's a woman, and for a moment all he can think is _Mal_ , full of despairing joy, but of course it's not her. Too tall, too lean, all wrong. Dom was incorrect, it turns out, about the most stubborn parasite. It isn't an idea. It's hope.

The woman who steps into the room walks with a long, even stride, iron-gray braid swinging behind her. Dom hears the _clink_ of weapons in her floor-length coat when she passes by him. She stands in front of the altar and looks the priest in the eye.

"Go away," she says, in a fully conversational tone of voice. The priest trips over his own feet before vanishing. She turns to Eames. In the same voice she says, "You're a criminal, aren't you?"

"That I am, ma'am," Eames says.

Her eyes glint. "Ever get caught?"

"Not often." Eames is holding Arthur's hand. Dom isn't sure when that happened, but it doesn't look like Eames is letting go any time soon. On the other hand, Arthur doesn't exactly look like he's waiting to be released.

She nods. "Good enough. You love him?"

Eames opens his mouth. Arthur claps a hand over it. "Yes," he answers instead of Eames. Eames nods vigorously.

Then the woman turns to Arthur. "Baby," she says, in a low voice. "Baby, you're getting _married._ " She has dimples when she smiles. The expression is sudden, incandescent, lighting up her entire face.

Arthur's smiling too, and yeah, Dom can see the family resemblance now. "Yeah," he says quietly. "Looks like."

The woman – the projection of Arthur's mother – reaches an imperious hand until Dom passes over the rings. "All right, you two," she says. "We're doing this quick and getting out of here. Arthur, you want to marry this guy?"

"Too late to back out, I guess," Arthur mutters. The tips of his ears have gone pink.

"You." Arthur's mother pokes Eames in the chest. "You want to marry my baby?"

Eames opens his mouth, looks cautiously at Arthur, then replies with a simple, "Yes."

"Okay. Rings on, one kiss, you're married. Got it?"

Eames is too busy kissing Arthur to answer. Dom half expects Arthur to break away, discomfited, but Arthur leans into Eames, grabbing his face with both hands until Dom wants to back off and give them some privacy.

The projection of Arthur's mother chooses that moment to pull an M-16 out of her coat and start knocking off the projections that circle around them. Not to be upstaged, Dom pulls out his own weapon. Ariadne, standing on a chair next to him, already dropped a few of the ones further out.

Together, they manage to clear a way to the exit. Dom gets separated from the rest for a while, giving the projections a run for their money. He finds himself whooping, smile cracking open across his face from the joy of the chase, the simple pure _fun_ of it. There's someone by his side. Dom can't spare the presence of mind to be worried, and in any case she lobs a hand grenade at the crowd behind them.

They find a hidden spot to wait at, panting and grinning at each other. Mal was always at her most beautiful flushed with the heat of battle, eyes bright and hair disarrayed.

She always caught her breath before him, too, but he didn't remember that until she straightened up to cup his jaw in her hand. "My love," she says, full of bliss and regret. Mal was always a creature of contradictions, and Dom could never hold all of them in mind.

"You're not my projection, are you?" he asks the shadow in front of him, the immaculately preserved memory of the woman he loved. "You're Arthur's projection, or maybe Eames'."

She laughs. "So perceptive." There's a hint of teasing in her voice when she adds, "For all that you always had a better feel for buildings than people."

He captures her hand in his. This time, she lets him. There's a patient look in her eyes, and a glint of humor, and for once Dom thinks he's in on the joke.

He kisses her hand. "I miss you," he told her. "Every day." It's a stupid thing to say. A _rock_ who spent half an hour in Dom's vicinity would know that. "But I think I'm getting tired of that."

This catches her by surprise. Then again, it did the same to Dom just now. That familiar quicksilver smile flashes across her face. "Then I won't tell you I'll see you later."

Mal doesn't vanish into thin air. She walks around the corner and away, and Dom lets her.

When he wakes up in the level above, his cheeks are wet.

~~

The tattered remains of their time in the first level consist of dodging angry reflections for long enough to make the kick. Arthur seems relieved to be doing that in his accustomed suit rather than a dress.

Inception is hit-and-miss. Dom knew that before taking the job, and that's why they got fifty percent in advance regardless of the outcome. The failure still rankles, though. Dom has a feeling Saito will not be pleased.

After the job, they take to drowning their sorrows. It's incredibly odd to see Eames slinging a careless arm across the back of Arthur's seat, to see Arthur lounging back and looking more relaxed than Dom has seen him since... ever, really.

Ariadne is still darting covert glances at them. Yusuf looks cool as a cucumber, and Dom can't figure out if it's because he hasn't grasped the full situation or because he honestly doesn't care or _what._

In the end, it's Ariadne who asks. "Wait. So you're telling me you're married? For how long?"

Arthur says, "A little over six years."

Eames takes that moment to decide to abandon all dignity, leaning his head against Arthur's shoulder. Yusuf hums to himself and attempts to construct a miniature harp out of drinking straws and toothpicks.

Ariadne frowns. "Wait. You mean to tell me that you got married after knowing each other for three months? Out of which – " She blinks and closes her mouth. "Look, I'm not judging, but isn't that a bit _fast?_ "

"Well, obviously it worked," Eames says.

Yusuf snorts. "No thanks to Eames." He looks up, grinning wide. "So there I am, minding my own business, when I get a call from Eames to make him a Canadian marriage license based on a template he sent me."

Eames gives Yusuf a warning look. "In my defense, I was extremely pressed for time."

"And then," Yusuf says, with relish, "I finish the thing for him, and it turns out he used a license from 1910 to base his work on."

Ariadne sniggers, then collapses into full blown-out laughter. "Oh, God," she says. "You could say you were time-travelers, forced into other eras by our society's intolerance."

"I'm pretty sure gay marriage was illegal even in Canada in _1910_ ," Arthur says, but his mouth is twitching into a smile as well.

Dom sits back and looks at them, all four of them arguing and sniping at each other about time-travel paradoxes and Jurassic Park's paleontological inaccuracy. It's not the kind of discussion he feels at home with, but it's nice feeling it wash over him, muted and comfortable.

Looks like there really was a secret. "But why didn't you tell anyone?" he says, cutting into the discussion. Everyone looks at him, but their curiosity isn't hostile.

"I'm not talking about myself," Dom says. It's well known fact in the industry that Arthur and Eames are an excellent team, but can barely stand each other. "Or, no, that's the wrong question. Why let it out now?" He's looking at Eames, who isn't even pretending not to know what Dom is talking about.

Eames shrugs. "There's just so much you can do, isn't there?" He looks at Arthur. "Sooner or later, secrets come out. Better like this than in any other dozen ways I can think about."

Slowly, Arthur says, "We were thinking about quitting the field, actually. Get some kind of legit work, at least for a while." His mouth quirks up at the edge. "I have a degree I never finished, you know. Time I got back to that."

Yusuf nods with great empathy.

"That's good to know," Dom says slowly. He wishes Arthur told him to begin with, known Dom could be trusted. That's not something he can say, though. Dom used to have entire cities full of secrets he couldn't trust anyone with.

Then Eames buys everyone another round of drinks, and he puts that thought off. One of these days he'll invite Arthur over, let him coo over James and attempt grown-up conversations with Phillipa. Then they'll sort all this out.

Meanwhile, Dom will enjoy his beer, and the temporary peace inside his head.


End file.
